Chinese Brown Sauce (All-Purpose Stir Fry Sauce)
This Chinese Brown Sauce recipe is your secret weapon for recreating your favorite Chinese takeout dishes right at home. With its rich, savory, and slightly sweet flavor, it's the perfect base for stir-fries like beef and broccoli or chicken and broccoli, and it's incredibly easy to make!
- Prep time
- 5 min
- Cook time
- 10 min
- Yield
- 1 serving
- Difficulty
- MEDIUM
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp soy sauce ((low sodium))
- 2 tbsp cornstarch
- 21/2 tbsp oyster sauce
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tbsp Shaoxing cooking wine
- 1 clove garlic ((smashed or grated))
- 1 cup water
- 1/2 tsp sesame oil ((optional))
Instructions
- 1
Peel the 1 clove garlic and smash it with the side of the knife. We want to keep this whole and intact so we can easily remove it and discard it before we use it. Alternatively, if you like it more garlicky, and you don't mind the garlic bits in the sauce, you can also finely mince it or grate it as well.
- 2
Mix 2 tablespoons cornstarch with 2 tablespoons soy sauce first, until the cornstarch has fully dissolved.
- 3
Then, add 2½ tablespoons oyster sauce, 1 tablespoon Shaoxing cooking wine, and 1 teaspoon sugar in the bowl and mix well.
- 4
Once everything is well mixed, add in 1 cup water and mix everything together.
- 5
Add a small pot over the stovetop and add in the sauce mixture and garlic clove. Set the stove to medium-low heat and keep stirring. **Make sure you are adding the sauce into a cold pot, we want to slowly bring it up to a simmer so that the garlic can infuse into the sauce before it thickens.
- 6
Bring the sauce to a simmer while stirring continuously. You will know it's done once the sauce boils vigorously and thickens into a see-through dark brown sauce.
- 7
Finally, reduce the heat to low and let your sauce simmer for about 1 minute.
- 8
Turn off the heat. Mix in ½ teaspoon sesame oil (optional). Do a taste test, if you like more sesame flavor, add ½ teaspoon more. Discard the whole garlic clove.
- 9
Your Chinese brown sauce is ready to use! This sauce is quite strong, so I like to use about ¼ cup of sauce for my stir fries or noodles. This is dependent on how much you're stir-frying so always do a taste test after ¼ cup, if you need more flavor, you can add more, a few tablespoons at a time until the flavor is right for you. This recipe makes about 1 cup of sauce.